Olympic selection trials: Saurabh Chaudhary tops air pistol with 588

This was Saurabh Chaudhary's best score, who had won the 2018 Asiad gold, and had followed that up with two individual and four mixed team WC gold medals.

Saurabh Chaudhary topped men's air pistol with a score of 588 in the Olympic trials.

Saurabh Chaudhary continued to assert his class as he topped men’s air pistol with a score of 588 in the Olympic shooting selection trials at the Dr. Karni Singh Range in Tughlakabad, on Wednesday.

This was the best score for the 17-year-old Saurabh, who had won the Asian Games gold in 2018, and had followed that up with two individual gold medals and four mixed team golds with Manu Bhaker in the World Cups last year.

In the scores that are counted for the Olympic selection prior to the current trials, Saurabh has an impressive string of 585, 581, 587, 580, 586, 584 and 583.

The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) had decided it would consider the scores of the shooters in Asian Games, World Championship, the World Cups and the Asian championships in finalising the team for the Tokyo Olympics.

Since the World Cup in Delhi has been postponed this season, the national federation opted to have a trial to fill the scores.

Abhishek Verma who was equally impressive, winning two gold medals in World Cups last year, came second with 585.

READ |

With only a handful of shooters in each event, it was decided not to have the finals in any of the events.

In women’s air pistol, Olympian Annu Raj Singh topped with 579, one point ahead of Esha Singh, while the Olympic quota winners Manu and Yashaswini Deswal had scores of 574 and 570 respectively.

In the 50-metre rifle 3-position event, the top four slots in the combined scores of men and women were occupied by the Olympic quota winners, Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar, Anjum Moudgil, Tejaswini Sawant and Sanjeev Rajput, in that order.

Of course, Anjum had won the air rifle Olympic quota with the silver medal in the World Championships, but would be eligible to shoot the rifle 3-position event as well in Olympics.

Aishwary was on top with 1178, while Anjum was equally assertive with 1174 among the women.

The results: Men: 10m air pistol: 1. Saurabh Chaudhary 588; 2. Abhishek Verma 585; 3. Dharmendra Singh 579; 4. Om Prakash Mitharval 577; 5. Gaurav Rana 576. 50m rifle 3-position: 1. Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar 1178; 2. Sanjeev Rajput 1169; 3. Chain Singh 1169; 4. Swapnil Kusale 1169. Women: 10m air pistol: 1. Annu Raj Singh 579; 2. Esha Singh 578; 3. Manu Bhaker 574; 4. Yashaswini Deswal 570. 50m rifle 3-position: 1. Anjum Moudgil 1174; 2. Tejaswini Sawant 1170; 3. Ayushi Podder 1168; 4. Sunidhi Chauhan 1163; 5. Gaayathri Nithyanadam 1158.